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The video platform that laid off Mr. Zhao, iQiyi, had an abysmal quarter, dropping about $268 million. Its share costs fell 85 % from their excessive in 2021, reflecting traders’ issues that the corporate, as soon as aspiring to be China’s Netflix, will likely be wanting exhibits that may entice extra subscribers and advertisers.
“The most important drawback for our business is extreme scarcity of content material provide,” iQiyi’s chief government, Gong Yu, advised analysts in November. He blamed, partly, censors’ sluggish approval. IQiyi didn’t reply to requests for remark.
(Mr. Zhao confirmed the main points in his social media account, however declined to remark additional.)
Many movie, TV and streaming initiatives have been canceled or killed over issues of more and more harsh and unpredictable censorship, stated individuals within the business.
Lilian Li, a author in Beijing, stated Tencent and a studio working with iQiyi approached her final 12 months about making a streaming sequence based mostly on certainly one of her historical past novels. A number of weeks later, each corporations advised her that that they had determined to not proceed as a result of there was little hope of getting the censors’ approval for a historical past sequence. She stated she obtained far fewer collaboration requests from content material suppliers in 2021.
Chinese language content material creators at all times joke that they dance with shackles on, which means they attempt to fulfill the censors whereas interesting to their audiences. By now it’s clear that regardless of the inventive concessions, there’s no assure that their initiatives can see the sunshine of the day.
One of the vital anticipated films for the 2021 Christmas season needed to change its identify to “Hearth on the Plain,” from “Moses on the Plain,” presumably due to its Christianity reference. Then 4 days earlier than its launch, the manufacturing group stated it was postponed with out giving an evidence.
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